The present invention relates to dry powder inhalers DPI and more exactly to a user interface for an optimum user-friendly usage of a dry powder inhaler operating with pre-metered doses in prefabricated sealed cassettes.
Today supply and distribution of medical powders take place in many different ways. Within health care more and more is focused on the possibility to dose and distribute powder directly to the lungs of a user by means of an inhaler to obtain an efficient, fast, and user-friendly administration of the specific medical substance.
Inhalers have been developed from being very simple to the up-to-date relatively complicated devices. For the up-to-date inhalers some form of dosing process is almost entirely used for preparing the dose to be inhaled. Most often the dosing of the amount to be inhaled takes place industrially in advance creating a dose package containing of the order 5-50 doses. The a inhaler then is loaded with such a dose package forming the source of sequential doses to be administered by the inhaler. Some of the inhalers have a powder magazine from which the powder is dosed by some device for distribution to the inspiration air.
Therefore there is a demand for an arrangement, which provides an easily operable user interface for a person utilizing a dry powder inhaler for ensuring proper dosing as well as a safe operation and handling of the medical powder to be inhaled.
An interface arrangement is disclosed for ensuring proper dosing as well as achieving a safe operation and handling of a dry powder inhaler (DPI) used for administration of a powder to be inhaled. The interface of the present invention primarily handles the loading of cassettes carrying pre-metered doses into the dry powder inhaler. An important characteristic is that the interface by utilizing a particular coding prevents a user from loading a cassette not containing the proper powder. Additionally the interface informs the user when the present mouthpiece, after being used for a pre-defined number of inhalation operations, ought to be exchanged for a new one The exchange is necessary in order to guarantee a high level of hygiene and to eliminate build-up of retained powder, which may affect the pre-metered dose. Additionally the interface informs a user when a present cassette has delivered its last dose and must be exchanged. Also information on the number of cassettes already utilized will control that another cassette still is permitted to be loaded. If this counter of the indicator exceeds a pre-defined number of used cassettes the inhaler is by definition worn out. A worn out dry powder inhaler has to be discarded. In that case the last cassette will not be able to be released from the inhaler device but will accompany the inhaler when it is discarded.
An interface arrangement for controlling the usage of a dry powder inhaler dosing is set forth by the independent claim 1, and further embodiments are set forth by the dependent claims 2 to 7.